The ethics of the Doctor changing Kazrans life

[lamuella]

They are comparable because in both instances he is using his future knowledge to comit an unethical act on someone to avoid their future.

Bear in mind that whatever his motivations, what the Doctor is doing to Kazran is unethical and the best that can be said about it is that the ends justify the means.

I don't think it's a settled matter that it is unethical.  If you removed the aspect of knowing how Kazran orginally turned out, then he's basically giving a sad child a series of merry christmasses.  If you add back in the way Kazran turned out, then he's taking a sad, self loathing, hate filled man and giving him a past in which he had great joy.  From what I remember, Kazran can still remember his life before the Doctor's new memories, it's just that he also has this new perspective.

For all that the act he was commiting on the Daleks is larger, their future evil is a lot larger too. By not destroying them when he had the chance he has caused far more people throughout history to die than would be the case had Kazran been left to allow the ship to crash.

Unless, that is, he's right about the eventual "Greater good" that comes from the existence of the Daleks.

[lamuella]

to give a more complete answer (and apologies if this gets all sorts of timey wimey), from the Doctor's point of view, I think there is a difference between "will die" and "will have died".  Stopping the creation of the Daleks would have stopped the deaths of billions of people who from the Doctor's perspective were already dead.  Stopping Amy and Rory's ship from crashing stops the deaths of thousands of people who from the Doctor's perspective aren't dead yet.  It's the difference between stopping the third world war and stopping the second world war.

To put it in more of a perspective, think of it this way:

If the Doctor had stopped the Daleks from ever existing, that would have changed everything about the universe he knew.  A universe without Daleks would have been an unbelievably different place from a universe with Daleks.  By enabling the existence of a universe without Daleks, he would essentially be stopping the universe we know from ever having existed.

Saving 4000 people on a spaceship doesn't do this.  The only person for whom the universe changes (from the point of view of the Doctor's timeline) is Kazran.

[Ian]

They are comparable because in both instances he is using his future knowledge to comit an unethical act on someone to avoid their future.

Bear in mind that whatever his motivations, what the Doctor is doing to Kazran is unethical and the best that can be said about it is that the ends justify the means.

I don't think it's a settled matter that it is unethical.  If you removed the aspect of knowing how Kazran orginally turned out, then he's basically giving a sad child a series of merry christmasses.  If you add back in the way Kazran turned out, then he's taking a sad, self loathing, hate filled man and giving him a past in which he had great joy.  From what I remember, Kazran can still remember his life before the Doctor's new memories, it's just that he also has this new perspective.

He is fundamentally tinkering with another persons life, checking how it turns out, then tinkering again to turn them into someone different. He destroying the original personallity and replacing it with someone new. That is a hugely presumptious act for anyone to perform. If you justify it in terms of Kazran being good, bad, happy or anything else, then you are turning the Doctor into judge, jury and executioner on his life. I think this very act is unethical, in the same way that mudering someone would be unethical. It can be justified in terms of a greater evil (ends and means though), but in an of itself it is an unethical thing to do. I'll also bet you a Gallifreyan dollar it's against the laws of time!

For all that the act he was commiting on the Daleks is larger, their future evil is a lot larger too. By not destroying them when he had the chance he has caused far more people throughout history to die than would be the case had Kazran been left to allow the ship to crash.

Unless, that is, he's right about the eventual "Greater good" that comes from the existence of the Daleks.

How does he know that a greater good wouldn't have come from Kazsran's life? Maybe the ship crashing and all those people dying was the catalyst for the people to rise up and replace him with a new order that over time led to a glorious and benevolent galactic empire? Maybe by saving those people in the ship he consigned that society to being a backwater and robbed the galaxy of a much greater good? Who knows, but it's just as valid an argument as with the Daleks.

Incidentaly, this subject is dealt with in great depth in Peter F Hamilton's Void Trilliogy, a great read which I heartily recommend! (You probably want to read the Commonwealth Saga first though)

[lamuella]

He is fundamentally tinkering with another persons life, checking how it turns out, then tinkering again to turn them into someone different. He destroying the original personallity and replacing it with someone new. That is a hugely presumptious act for anyone to perform. If you justify it in terms of Kazran being good, bad, happy or anything else, then you are turning the Doctor into judge, jury and executioner on his life. I think this very act is unethical, in the same way that mudering someone would be unethical. It can be justified in terms of a greater evil (ends and means though), but in an of itself it is an unethical thing to do. I'll also bet you a Gallifreyan dollar it's against the laws of time!

let's play devil's advocate here: The Doctor plays judge, jury, and executioner every single time he steps out of the TARDIS.  He's a time traveller, he has seen the far future of the human race.  In this kind of situation your alternatives are either to keep the TARDIS in flight forever in case it lands on a butterfly, or do what you think is right and accept that you're fundamentally tinkering with people's lives no matter what you do.

Who is the Doctor to say the Nestene consciousness shouldn't have taken over the world?  Or the Slitheen?  Who is the Doctor to either grant the gelth dominion over human corpses or refuse them that right?

The Doctor is a meddler.  He turns up in places and times where he has no business being, and changes things to how he wants them to be.  The only thing, the only thing that separates him from a trickster character like the Meddling Monk is that the Doctor is usually motivated by trying to restore the status quo, and trying to give people free lives.  In this case, he makes the decision that the lives of four thousand people in a crashing space ship are more important than the memories of an old man.

[Ian]

The difference is that once he has turned up in a place, the Doctor becomes a part of events and is no different to any other person there. He sees things that are happening at the time, reacts as he sees fit and events unfold. He hardly ever uses his 'fore knowledge' to alter events in a specific way, mostly it is only mentioned as occationally needing to set things right (i.e. undo someone else's meddling), or something being a 'fixed point in time'. The most notable occations when he has deliberartely fiddled we got the time war.

This kind of back and forth meddling is very a-typical and some of his previous incarnations would have been horrified at it. Compare and contrast what he does here to the ninth Doctor's reaction to Rose's actions in 'Fathers Day'. It ripped a hole in time, and the Doctor makes clear that his people wouldn't have allowed it were they still alive. If they would have kept one man dead to preserve the integrity of time, it seems hard to beleive they wouldn't leave Kazran as he is.

[lamuella]

I still disagree, but I think I'm starting to repeat myself.

While changing someone's past / memories is a drastic course of action, I don't view it as being as drastic as bringing someone back from the dead.  I think that describing this action as "unethical, in the same way that mudering someone would be unethical" is a bit over the top.

I don't think we're going to agree on this one, so I'll step out of the conversation at this point.

[Ian]

I still disagree, but I think I'm starting to repeat myself.

While changing someone's past / memories is a drastic course of action, I don't view it as being as drastic as bringing someone back from the dead.  I think that describing this action as "unethical, in the same way that mudering someone would be unethical" is a bit over the top.

I don't think we're going to agree on this one, so I'll step out of the conversation at this point.

I think that is a reasonable landing point for the discussion. Even by Doctor Who standards we were delving pretty deep into the realms of geekiness! (My wife would not be impressed )

[Rory Pond]

The one aspect missing from the back-and-forth between TPO and lamuella (and one I touched upon earlier in the discussion) is that this is an adaptation of Dickens' original tale and, as such, a large degree of timey-wimey meddling was built into the premise. Whatever your feelings on the ethical implications, the Doctor's actions are perfectly in keeping with the original plot and not necessarily reflective on the Doctor's conduct in other, less-Christmassy situations.

And now I'm out as well.

[judgefloyd]

there is indeed a tension between the crude utilitarianism of the Spock quotation in the first post (the needs of the one vs the needs of the many) and the Doctor's more Kantian approach in other stories in which he seems resolved to never see anyone as a means to an end.  I too found the re-writing of Kazran's past a bit distasteful.  I think the story wants to resolve it with the double rescue and with Kazran realising that being a complete b****** is a worse way to live one's life, but it's not like he gets any choice and the Doctor is indeed being just as inflexible as Kazran's horrible father.  I liked the story a lot, but couldn't help feeling sorry for Kazran - not because he had such a rotten childhood (lots of people have those and don't wind up as pointlessly awful as Kazran was in the beginning of the story) but because he was so powerless.
    As has already been said here, I can't see what  Dicken's story has to do with that.  Scrooge always has a choice and is just being shown options and outcomes while Kazran is hving his own experience redone.   

Obviously there's a higher order of morality involved when you're saving companions and increasing the quality of life remaining to smoking hot opera singers.